It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. Images have a special ability to evoke emotions, attract attention, and convey a message. As a reflection of this, most modern written communication has a graphical component, and often this graphical component includes photographic images. Contemporary commercial web sites, for example, make liberal use of images. As a result, commercial web sites often have customary sources for obtaining images, whether these sources are internal, such as staff photographers, or external, such as image licensing services, including Getty Images.
While much of the content available online is provided by commercial web sites, many private individuals also create content and share it online. Some people host web sites on which they share their research, opinions, and even information about their personal lives. Other people have public web journals to which they periodically add entries. One type of online web journal is a “blog,” or web log.
Blogs may contain text only, or they may also include images. If an individual wants to write a blog entry about Machu Picchu, for example, he may start with text, but may find that including pictures of this region will not only better illustrate its amazing beauty, but may also attract more readers to his blog. Another individual who wants to blog (i.e., write a blog entry) about a notable political figure may want to include a picture so that a reader can see the person who is the subject of the blog entry. Readers may find that a story included in a blog is more interesting to read if there are pictures associated with the story.